//------------------------------// // Tenno Arrival // Story: The Void of Harmony // by Mordred //------------------------------// I was on my way to Tennocon in Quebec, cosplaying as my own operator from the game Warframe, wearing a Koppra operator outfit, with Manduka sleeves, with the main body black, with purple accents on the legs, gloves, and shoulders, along with gold metallics around the sleeves, hips, and mask, and I’d spent $400 on it, largely due to the metallics being coated in gold foil, and the sigil on the chest being plastic with small lights under the it, causing it to glow purple. The sigil was the Void Gate sigil, a reward for reaching 450 days played in-game. I was walking from my hotel a couple of blocks away from the event center when I saw an amp that looked like the one that I normally used for my operator on window display inside a costume store named ‘The Merchant’s Guild’ and went inside, seeing no one manning the rather old-looking register. I walked over to the window display admiring the amp, and noting that there was no price mentioned for it. Suddenly, a gravelly voice rang out from behind me, saying, “That amp will be eighty dollars, if you want it, young Tenno.” I jumped, quickly turning around to see an older man dressed rather casually for a worker. As if he had read my mind, he said, “I don’t work here, I’m the owner. So would you like to buy that amp?” I nodded my head, smiling happily, not realizing that I had my mask up already. I pulled my wallet out of a pocket hidden underneath the folds of cloth that went down to my knees, and looked through it, seeing that I didn’t have quite enough, realizing that I had spent it on food on the drive to Quebec. I told him, “I only have seventy dollars, so would it be possible to open a store credit for the rest?” The man shook his head, and then thought for a second before snapping his fingers. He walked back over to the register, and pulled out a card reader from a drawer next to the register and beckoned me over, saying, “We have this for those who don’t have cash for something in here, you can pay the difference with a card,” I forked over the cash and swiped my card, taking the amp and affixing it to my right arm, when I suddenly saw a bright flash of light and found myself standing in what could only be described as the throne room of a medieval castle, with two women with a single small horn coming out of their forehead, and wings sprouting out of their backs. While they were fighting, I started making my way along the wall, wondering why they hadn’t noticed me yet, when I looked down at my hand, or rather through it, as I was largely invisible, with the only thing thing telling I was there was a soft purple glow. I yelped, surprisingly femininely for a guy, sliding backward down the wall behind me, and the shorter fighter, who had midnight blue skin, and had been losing ground while I was staring at my somewhat invisible hand, grinned while looking at my, now very visible, self, and dashed over away from the taller white skinned woman, with her screaming, “LUNA, NO!!” as the blue one was about to impact, I put my arms over my head, suddenly becoming invisible again, and she went straight through me, with the white sister suddenly starting to glow brightly, shooting a thin beam at the dark blue sister, which wrapped around and immobilized her, starting to turn an ominous shade of blue, while forcing her to start floating, when suddenly she disappeared from existence, with the last thing I saw before passing out being  the snarl on her face. I awoke in a surprisingly posh room, with what seemed to be Victorian style furniture in shades of blues and blacks all around, with the walls being gray stone. I sat up, rubbing my head in my hands, and wondered aloud, “Where the hell am I?” The white sister from before was sitting in a chair off to the side, sobbing, but upon hearing my voice, which was a lot more feminine than before, looked up suddenly, with her tears gone in an instant, asking, “Art thou alright? Were ye harmed in our quarrel with our sister?” I shook my head, and realizing that I still had my mask on, I pressed a button on the back of my head, to make the mask fold down, similarly to how it does in game, and then started feeling my face, realizing that it was much more feminine. “W-why are you talking like that?,” I stuttered upon hearing the sound of my voice, and the woman’s face adopted a quizzical look upon seeing the mask come down and hearing the question, not entirely comprehending what I had said. Suddenly it clicked, and I realized that she was speaking in Old English, with the royal connotations as well. She thought for a second and asked, “Dost thou not know who we are?” I shook my head, and then blurted out, “Royalty?” she nodded, with a sad smile on her face. She then looked at me and, seemingly realized that we hadn’t been introduced, said, “We are Celestia, Princess of the Sun. What might thy name be?” I thought over it for a moment, realizing that as I was no longer a guy and in a seemingly different world, I would be able to choose any name that I wanted. I introduced myself, stating, “I am Mirage, the one who is always within sight, yet still just out of reach.” I got out of the rather large bed, and stretched my arms over my head, accidentally grabbing on to the amp that was wrapped around my right hand. This caused it to fire a wave of purple energy at the ceiling, causing a small piece of it to cave in. Celestia, who had been sitting next to the bed, jumped up at the firing of the amp and tackled out of the way of some falling debris. I looked down at my hand, specifically the amp that was attached to it, and thought, ‘Disappear’ surprised when it actually faded from existence. I suddenly became aware of a weight and voice above me, asking if I was alright. I nodded to indicate that I was fine and she got off of me, allowing me to sit up and observe the damage I had caused. There was a considerable chunk of rubble where I had been standing, and another, slightly smaller, chunk was on the bed. Celestia suddenly grabbed my right arm, which had previously had the amp on it, and was examining it with some sort of light coming from the horn on her head. She looked at me in fear, and I, being a dunce, asked, “What’s wrong? Never seen a disappearing weapon?” She snapped her head to me in shock upon the realization that what she thought was an odd growth on a normal human’s body was a weapon on a Void being. She stated to me, “The power we just sensed in your arm, it was the power of the Void, was it not?” The horn on her head started glowing, and I felt my legs being rooted to the ground. I looked down, and saw a creeping gray making its way up my body, wherever it reached becoming numb. Celestia looked at me in pity, saying, “The only other being on this planet that had any contact with the Void was my sister, and it drove her insane,” by now the gray had reached my lower chest, so I reached up and hit the same button that I had used to lower the mask, so that it would raise it instead. My arm ended up getting petrified this way, causing it to look like I was rubbing the back of my head. I was still semi-conscious when the gray reached my head, and as soon as it encompassed me, I became fully conscious of how I couldn’t move. I saw Celestia apologizing to the statue that was now me, but couldn’t hear anything other than a dull ringing. I suddenly saw a mirror image of myself, except with solid black eyes, appear at Celestia’s elbow, smiling at me knowingly, before turning into a wisp of smoke. I shut off most mental functions, not becoming conscious again until I felt myself being moved. I let myself see again, wondering all the while as to why I had not panicked yet. I opened my ‘eyes’ and saw that I was now in a courtyard in the middle of a row of hedges, and across from me was a rather odd looking man in a suit with different colored sleeves, pants with different colored legs, and mismatched wings on his back and horns on his head. I felt a kind of probing coming from the statue’s direction, and heard, or rather, felt, a voice in my head, saying, ‘Hmm, a creature of the Void that is not insane. Interesting…’ I mustered all of my not very considerable mental might and corrected him, saying, ‘I am a being, not a creature, and who exactly are you?’ The statue simply stood there, impassive and unresponsive. I shrugged my mental shoulders and began looking through my considerable repertoire of abilities, though none of them seemed cemented. It seemed I had all of the Focus trees that I had in-game, but it could’ve just been what I was sent here with, as it was all unlocked and maxed out. The amp was gilded, so it was decent, and I was currently running Vazarin as my primary school, as that was the one I had unlocked first in game. I decided to try to reach my mind out with the Transference ability, and found multiple warframes, thousands of miles away, one in an endless desert, one in a grove in a forest, one in a city made of crystal spires, which responded to my prod and started heading towards me, and finally, one in a cave with a large group of what seemed to be infested sleeping around it. I went back to sleep for what seemed eternity, only to be woken up again by a group of children and a red-skinned woman talking excitedly. They were all gathered around the statue across from me, with one of the children asking, “Who’s Discord?” the oldest woman, who I assume was their teacher, went off into a tale about the primordial being of chaos that reigned over the land for thousands of years before the two princesses defeated him with something called the ‘Elements of Harmony’ I decided to reach out my mind again to try to find how the warframe from the crystal city was doing on its way here, and was surprised to find that it was just outside the city. A voice pulled me back from my mind’s wanderings, asking, “Who’s Mirage?” The teacher smiled and gathered the children around her as she told the story of how I had mysteriously appeared and given Celestia an opening to banish someone named ‘Nightmare Moon’ to the moon, when it clicked that it was the woman that she was fighting in the throne room when I originally arrived. She didn’t continue after that, which meant that Celestia had given no reason as to why I was petrified. I suddenly realized that I could move my fingers, and when I moved them the stone encasing me turned to dust. However, as I inhaled much of the dust, with my mask not filtering out much of the dust, I started coughing explosively on the pedestal that I was standing on. The group screamed and ran, and a minute later, as I was still catching my breath, a couple of men in golden armor showed up, and shouted, “Stop, in the name of Celestia!” I looked up at them, and, having figured out how to use the Void abilities I had seemingly gotten from being sent here, Void dashed through both of them, knocking them into the hedge. Though, since I only knew the theory of how to use my abilities, I overshot a bit and crashed through a stained glass window depicting Celestia banishing Nightmare Moon. I barely had a second to register that I was in what seemed to be a throne room before guards surrounded me. I used Transference to pull the warframe that was outside the city to me, and was surprised to find out that it was the Mirage Prime that I used in-game, with all of the weapons I had equipped, namely Tiberon Prime, Akbolto Prime, and Dakra Prime. Celestia gestured for her guards to stand down, and I used Transference again to step out of the warframe. Celestia gasped when she realized who I was, and started charging the petrify spell that she had used to seal me initially, to which I responded by Void dashing through the guards between her and myself, stopping in front of her and grabbing her horn to stop her from casting the spell. She stopped the spell, and I once again deactivated the mask, allowing her to look into my glowing purple eyes. She realized that I was still completely sane, instead of being driven mad by the Void, and started crying, begging me to forgive her for being turned to stone, to which I nodded. I let go of her horn when I felt a shocking sensation in my abdomen, and I looked down to see what seemed to be my hand, pulsing with electricity, sticking through my stomach. I collapsed into Celestia, and the hand disappeared, leaving the words, “Hey kiddo,” ringing through my ears as I lost consciousness.